USS Maine (ACR-1) was the United States Navy's second commissioned pre-dreadnought battleship,[a][1] although she was originally classified as an armored cruiser. She is best known for her catastrophic loss in Havana harbor. Maine had been sent to Havana, Cuba to protect U.S. interests during the Cuban revolt against Spain.[2] On the evening of 15 February 1898, she suddenly exploded, and swiftly sank, killing nearly three quarters of her crew.[3] Though then, as now, the cause and responsibility for her sinking were unclear; popular opinion in the U.S. blamed Spain, and the sinking (popularized in the phrase Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain!) was one of the precipitating events of the Spanish–American War.[3][4] Her sinking remains the subject of speculation, with various authors proposing that she sank due to the results of an undetected fire in one of her coal bunkers,[3] that she was the victim of a naval mine,[3] and that she was deliberately sunk for the purposes of driving the U.S. into a war with Spain.[citation needed]

Background

The delivery of the Brazilian battleship Riachuelo in 1883 and the acquisition of other armored warships by Brazil, Argentina and Chile shortly afterwards alarmed the United States government as the Brazilian Navy was now the most powerful in the Western Hemisphere. The Chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee, Hilary A. Herbert, stated to Congress: "if all this old navy of ours were drawn up in battle array in mid-ocean and confronted by the Riachuelo it is doubtful whether a single vessel bearing the American flag would get into port."[5]

The Navy Advisory Board, confronted with the possibility of hostile warships operating off the American coast, began planning for ships to protect it in 1884. The ships would have to fit within existing docks and had to have a shallow draft to enable them to use all the major American ports and bases. Its maximum beam was similarly fixed and the board concluded that at a length of about 300 feet (91 m), the maximum displacement was thus about 7,000 tons. A year later the Bureau of Construction and Repair presented two designs to Secretary of the Navy William Collins Whitney, one for a 7,500-ton battleship and one for a 5,000-ton armored cruiser. Whitney decided instead to ask Congress for two 6,000-ton warships and they were authorized in August 1886. A design contest was held, asking naval architects to submit designs for the two ships: armored cruiser Maine and battleship Texas. It was specified that Maine had to have a speed of 17 knots (20 mph; 31 km/h), a ram bow, double bottom, and be able carry two torpedo boats. Her armament was specified as: four 10-inch (254 mm) guns, six 6-inch (152 mm) guns, various light weapons, and six torpedo tubes. It was specifically stated that the main guns "must afford heavy bow and stern fire."[6] Armor thickness and many details were also defined. Specifications for Texas were similar, but demanded a main battery of two 12-inch (305 mm) guns and slightly thicker armor.[7]

Deck plan of the Maine

The winning design for the Maine was from the Bureau of Construction and Repair, while the winning design for the Texas was from a British designer, William John, who was working for the Barrow Shipbuilding Company at that time. Both designs resembled the Brazilian battleship Riachuelo, having the main gun turretssponsoned out over the sides of the ship and echeloned.[8] The need for cross-deck fire caused the superstructure to be separated into three structures to allow for each gun to fire between the sections of the superstructure. This significantly limited the gun's ability to fire to the opposite beam as the superstructure still restricted each gun's arc of fire.[6] The echeloned turrets was a logical result given the specific demand for heavy end-on fire, as this placement allowed both turrets to fire fore and aft.[8]Broadside fire was sacrificed in this arrangement, a key factor when using a line of battle tactic. As the United States lacked ships with which to form such a line at the time,[9] the ships were instead to charge and try to ram the enemy.[6]

Design

Stern View of the "USS Maine"

General characteristics

Maine was 324 feet 4 inches (98.9 m) long overall. She had a beam of 57 feet (17.4 m) and a maximum draft of 22 feet 6 inches (6.9 m). She displaced 6,682 long tons (6,789.2 t).[10] A centerline longitudinal watertight bulkhead separated the engines. Her double bottom only covered the hull from the foremast to the aft end of the armored citadel.[11] She had a metacentric height of 3.45 feet (1.1 m) as designed and was fitted with a ram bow.[12]

Propulsion

Maine's machinery was built by the N.F. Palmer Jr. & Company's Quintard Iron Works, of New York.[13] She had two inverted vertical triple-expansion steam engines with a total designed output of 9,293 indicated horsepower (6,930 kW). Eight single-ended Scotch marine boilers provided steam to the engines at a working pressure of 135 pounds per square inch (930 kPa; 9.5 kgf/cm2) at a temperature 364 °F(184 °C). On trials, she reached a speed of 16.45 knots (30.47 km/h; 18.93 mph), failing to meet her contract speed of 17 knots (31 km/h; 20 mph).[10] She carried a maximum load of 896 long tons (910 t) of coal.[12] She carried two small dynamos to power her searchlights and provide interior lighting.[11]

Armament

Maine's main armament consisted of four 10-inch (254 mm)/35 cal Mark II guns mounted in twin hydraulically powered turrets. These guns had a maximum elevation of 15° and could depress to −3°. 90 rounds per gun were carried. They fired a 520 pounds (236 kg) shell at a muzzle velocity of 2,000 feet per second (610 m/s) to a range of 20,000 yards (18,000 m) at maximum elevation.[14]

The six 6-inch (152 mm) guns were mounted in casemates in the hull, two each at the bow and stern and the last two amidships.[13] Data is lacking, but they could probably depress to −7° and elevate to +12°. They fired shells that weighed 105 pounds (48 kg) with a muzzle velocity of about 1,950 feet per second (590 m/s). They had a maximum range less than 9,000 yards (8,200 m) at maximum elevation.[15]

The anti-torpedo boat armament consisted of seven 57-millimeter (2.2 in) Driggs-Schroeder six-pounder guns mounted on the superstructure deck.[13] They fired a shell weighing about 6 lb (2.7 kg) at a muzzle velocity of about 1,765 feet per second (538 m/s) at a rate of 20 rounds per minute to a range of less than 8,700 yards (7,955 m).[16] The lighter armament comprised four each 37-millimeter (1.5 in) Hotchkiss and Driggs-Schroeder one-pounder guns. Four of these were mounted on the superstructure deck, two were mounted in small casemates at the extreme stern and one was mounted in each fighting top.[13] They fired a shell weighing about 1.1 pounds (0.50 kg) at a muzzle velocity of about 2,000 feet per second (610 m/s) at a rate of 30 rounds per minute to a range about 3,500 yards (3,200 m).[17]

Maine had four 18-inch (457 mm) above-water torpedo tubes, two on each broadside. In addition, she was designed to carry two 14.8 long tons (15.0 t) steam-powered torpedo boats, each with a single 14-inch (356 mm) torpedo tube and a one-pounder gun. Only one was built, but it had a top speed of only a little over 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph) so it was transferred to the Naval Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island as a training craft.[b][18]

Armor

The main waterline belt, made of nickel-steel, had a maximum thickness of 12 inches (305 mm) and tapered to 7 inches (178 mm) at its lower edge. It was 180 feet (54.9 m) long and covered the machinery spaces and the 10-inch magazines. It was 7 feet (2.1 m) high, of which 3 feet (0.9 m) was above the design waterline. It angled inwards for 17 feet (5.2 m) at each end, thinning to 8 inches (203 mm), to provide protection against raking fire. A 6-inch transverse bulkhead closed off the forward end of the armored citadel. The forward portion of the 2 inches (51 mm) thick protective deck ran from the bulkhead all the way to the bow and served to stiffen the ram. The deck sloped downwards to the sides, but its thickness increased to 3 inches (76 mm). The rear portion of the protective deck sloped downwards towards the stern, below the waterline to protect the propeller shafts and steering gear. The sides of the circular turrets were eight inches thick. The barbettes were twelve inches thick with their lower portions reduced to ten inches. The conning tower had ten-inch walls. Its voicepipes and electrical leads were protected by an armored tube 4.5 inches (114 mm) thick.[19]

Construction

"The Last Sunset of the Maine". Illustration from Our Country in War by Murat Halstead

Maine, the first U.S. Navy ship to be named for the state of Maine, was a 6,682-long-ton (6,789 t) second-class pre-dreadnought battleship originally designated as Armored Cruiser #1.[20] Congress authorized her construction on 3 August 1886, and her keel was laid down on 17 October 1888, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. She was launched on 18 November 1889, sponsored by Ms. Alice Tracey Wilmerding (granddaughter of Navy Secretary Benjamin F. Tracy), and commissioned on 17 September 1895, under the command of Captain Arent S. Crowninshield.[21]

Sinking

Wreckage of Maine, 1898

Maine spent her active career operating along the East Coast of the United States and the Caribbean. In January 1898, Maine was sent from Key West, Florida, to Havana, Cuba, to protect U.S. interests during a time of local insurrection and civil disturbances. Three weeks later, at 21:40 on 15 February, an explosion on board Maine occurred in the Havana Harbor. Later investigations revealed that more than 5 long tons (5.1 t) of powder charges for the vessel's six and ten-inch guns had detonated, obliterating the forward third of the ship.[22] The remaining wreckage rapidly settled to the bottom of the harbor. Most of Maine's crew were sleeping or resting in the enlisted quarters in the forward part of the ship when the explosion occurred. 266 men lost their lives as a result of the explosion or shortly thereafter, and eight more died later from injuries. Captain Charles Sigsbee and most of the officers survived because their quarters were in the aft portion of the ship. Altogether, there were only 89 survivors, 18 of whom were officers.[23] On 21 March, the US Naval Court of Inquiry in Key West declared that a naval mine caused the explosion.[24]

The explosion was a precipitating cause of the Spanish–American War that began in April 1898. Advocates of the war used the rallying cry, "Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!"[4][25][26][27][28] The episode focused national attention on the crisis in Cuba but was not cited by the William McKinley administration as a casus belli, though it was cited by some who were already inclined to go to war with Spain over their perceived atrocities and loss of control in Cuba.[29][30]

The investigations

In addition to the inquiry commissioned by the Spanish Government to naval officers Del Peral and De Salas, two Naval Courts of Inquiry were ordered: The Sampson board in 1898 and the Vreeland board in 1911. In 1976, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover commissioned a private investigation into the explosion and the National Geographic Society did an investigation in 1999 using computer simulations. All investigations agreed that an explosion of the forward magazines caused the destruction of the ship, but different conclusions were reached how the magazines could explode.[30][31]

1898 Del Peral and De Salas Inquiry

The Spanish inquiry, conducted by Del Peral and De Salas, collected evidence from officers of naval artillery who had examined the remains of Maine. Del Peral and De Salas identified the spontaneous combustion of the coal bunker that was located adjacent to the munition stores in the Maine as the likely cause of the explosion. Additional observations included that:

had a mine been the cause of the explosion a column of water would have been observed

the wind and the waters were calm on that date and hence a mine could not have been detonated by contact but using electricity, but no cables had been found

no dead fish were found in the harbor as would be expected following an explosion in the water

the munition stores usually do not explode when mines sink ships.

The conclusions of the report were not reported at that time by the American press.[32]

1898 Sampson Board's Court of Inquiry

1898 Sampson Board

In order to find the cause of the explosion a naval inquiry was ordered by the United States shortly after the incident, headed by Captain William T. Sampson. Ramón Blanco y Erenas, Spanish governor of Cuba, had proposed instead a joint Spanish-American investigation of the sinking.[33] Captain Sigsbee had written that "many Spanish officers, including representatives of General Blanco, now with us to express sympathy."[34] In a cable, the Spanish Minister of Colonies, Segismundo Moret, had advised Blanco “to gather every fact you can to prove the Maine catastrophe cannot be attributed to us.”[35]

The Board arrived on 21 February and took testimonies of survivors, witnesses and divers (who were sent down to investigate the wreck). The Sampson Board concluded that Maine had been blown up by a mine, which in turn caused the explosion of her forward magazines. They reached this conclusion based on the fact that the majority of witnesses had heard two explosions and that part of the keel was bent inwards.[30] The official report from the board, which was presented to the Navy Department in Washington, D.C. on 21 March, specifically stated the following:

At frame 18 the vertical keel is broken in two and the flat keel is bent at an angle similar to the angle formed by the outside bottom plating. [...] In the opinion of the court, this effect could have been produced only by the explosion of a mine situated under the bottom of the ship at about frame 18, and somewhat on the port side of the ship." (part of the court's 5th finding)

"In the opinion of the court, the MAINE was destroyed by the explosion of a submarine mine, which caused the partial explosion of two or more of her forward magazines." (the court's 7th finding) and

"The court has been unable to obtain evidence fixing the responsibility for the destruction of the Maine upon any person or persons." (the court's 8th finding).[24]

1911 Vreeman Board's Court of Inquiry

Wreckage of Maine 16 June 1911

In 1910 the decision was made to do a second Court of Inquiry. The reasons for this were the recovery of the bodies of the victims so they could be buried in the United States and a desire for a more thorough investigation. The fact that the Cuban government wanted the wreck removed from the harbour of Havana might also have played a role. Beginning in December 1910, a cofferdam was built around the wreck and water was pumped out, exposing the wreck by late 1911. From 20 November-2 December 1911, a court of inquiry headed by Rear Admiral Charles E. Vreeland visited the wreck. They concluded that an external explosion had triggered the explosion of the magazines, however this explosion was farther aft and lower powered than concluded by the Sampson Board. The Vreeman Board also found that the bending of frame 18 was caused by the explosion of the magazines, not by the external explosion.[30] After the investigation, the newly-located dead were buried in Arlington National Cemetery and the hollow, intact portion of the hull of Maine was refloated and ceremoniously scuttled at sea on 16 March 1912.[36]

1974 Rickover investigation

Admiral Hyman G. Rickover became intrigued with the disaster and began a private investigation in 1974. Using information from the two official inquiries, newspapers, personal papers and information on the construction and ammunition of Maine it was concluded that the explosion was not caused by a mine. Instead spontaneous combustion of coal in the bunker next to magazine was speculated to be the most likely cause. The Admiral published a book about this investigation, How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed, in 1976.[3]

1998 National Geographic investigation

In 1998, National Geographic Magazine commissioned an analysis by Advanced Marine Enterprises. This investigation, done to commemorate the centennial of the sinking of Maine, was based on computer modeling, a technique unavailable for previous investigations. The conclusions reached were "while a spontaneous combustion in a coal bunker can create ignition-level temperatures in adjacent magazines, this is not likely to have occurred on the Maine, because the bottom plating identified as Section 1 would have blown outward, not inward," and "The sum of these findings is not definitive in proving that a mine was the cause of sinking of the Maine, but it does strengthen the case in favor of a mine as the cause."[31] Some experts, including Admiral Rickover’s team and several analysts at AME, do not agree with the conclusion.[31]

False flag hypothesis

It has been suggested by some that the sinking was a false flag operation conducted by the U.S.

Mikhail Khazin, a Russian economist who once ran the cultural section at Komsomolskaya Pravda, speaking in a 2008 Pravda interview of the need in troubled times to change the psychology of society, to unite it, said that "the Americans blew up their own battleship Maine."[37]

Eliades Acosta, a prominent Cuban historian, head of the Cuban Communist Party's Committee on Culture and former director of the Jose Marti National Library in Havana, offered the standard Cuban interpretation of the sinking of the Maine: that the United States itself probably did it, in an interview to The New York Times. But Dr. Acosta adds that "Americans died for the freedom of Cuba, and that should be recognized. But others wanted to annex Cuba, and that should be criticized. If relations with the United States improve, all these things can be re-examined more fairly".[38]

Cuban officials argue that the U.S. may have deliberately sunk the ship to create a pretext for military action against Spain. The wording on the Maine monument in Havana describes Maine's sailors as "victims sacrificed to the imperialist greed in its fervor to seize control of Cuba",[39] which "alludes to the theory that U.S. agents deliberately blew up their own ship to create a pretext for declaring war on Spain".[40] (The United States occupied Cuba between 1898 and 1902 and, as promised in the Teller Amendment, did not attempt to annex the island.)

Crew

The ship's crew consisted of 355:

26 officers

290 sailors

39 Marines

Of these, there were 261 fatalities:

2 officers and 251 sailors/Marines either killed by the explosion or drowned

Memorials

Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery centered on the ship's main mast

In February 1898, the recovered bodies of sailors who died on Maine were interred in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. Some injured sailors were sent to hospitals in Havana and Key West, Florida. Those who died in hospitals were buried in Key West. In December 1899, the bodies in Havana were disinterred and brought back to the United States for burial at Arlington National Cemetery[42] where there is a memorial to those who died and which includes the ship's main mast. 165 were buried at Arlington—although remains of one sailor were exhumed for his home town; of the rest only 62 were known.[43] Nine bodies were never recovered and 19 crewmen buried in Key West Cemetery remain there under a statue of a U.S. sailor holding an oar.[44]

There is also a memorial, consisting of the shield and scrollwork from the bow of the ship, in Bangor, Maine. The base of Maine's conning tower is currently on display at Westbrook Veterans' Memorial Park in Canton, Ohio, hometown of President McKinley. Shells from the main battery were placed along with small plaques as memorials at the Soldier's Home in Marion, Indiana (now a VA Hospital and national cemetery), at the St. Joseph County Courthouse lawn in South Bend, Indiana, at Point Defiance Park in Tacoma, Washington and at the old soldiers' home in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A shell from the main battery is located just inside of the Pine St. entrance of city hall in Lewiston, Maine. There is a monument for Maine with a portion of a bronze engine room ventilator shaft in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey.[45] The capstan of the ship was secured for Charleston, South Carolina where it was displayed on the Battery until 2006; it is currently awaiting reinstallation.[46]

Monument to victims of Maine in Havana, Cuba, c. 1930

The explosion-bent fore mast of Maine is located at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland,[47] causing a traditional in-joke among midshipmen that Maine, with its main mast in Arlington National Cemetery (Northern Virginia) and its fore mast in Annapolis, is the "longest ship in the Navy".[48]

USS Maine Monument in New York City

On 9 May 1910, Congress authorized the raising of Maine to remove it as a navigation hazard in Havana Harbor and for the proper interment of the bodies of the crew in Arlington National Cemetery. The Army Corps of Engineers built a cofferdam around her wreck and the water was pumped out from inside the cofferdam. By 30 June 1911, her main deck was exposed and it was revealed that the ship forward of Frame 41 was entirely destroyed. At the very bow all that was left was a twisted mass of steel that was out of line with the rest of the hull and retained no resemblance to a ship. A watertight bulkhead was built across the front of the after section of the ship, which was in surprisingly good shape, to allow the ship to be refloated. On 10 February 1912, water was let back into the interior of the cofferdam and she broke free from the mud. The cofferdam was full by 13 February and she was towed out of the cofferdam on 15 March by the tug Osceola. The bodies of her crew were then removed to the armored cruiserNorth Carolina for repatriation.

The following morning she was towed out past the three mile limit by Osceola, escorted by North Carolina and the light cruiserBirmingham. Her sea cocks were opened and she sank in 600 fathoms (3,600 ft; 1,100 m) of water to the salutes of Birmingham and North Carolina.[49] During the salvage, remains of 66 more were found, of whom only one (an engineering officer) was identified and returned to his home town; the rest were reburied at Arlington Cemetery making a total of 229 buried there.[43]

A gun recovered from the Maine is displayed at Fort Allen Park in Portland, Maine

In 1913, a USS Maine Monument designed by Harold Van Buren Magonigle was completed and dedicated in New York City. Located at the southwest corner of Central Park at the Merchant's Gate entrance to the park.[50] On the park side of the monument is fixed a memorial plaque that was cast in metal salvaged from the ship.[51] It is not known how many of these plaques by sculptor Charles Keck were produced, but they can be found in many locations across the United States.

In 1926, the Cuban government also erected a memorial to the victims of Maine on the Malecon, near the Hotel Nacional in commemoration of the assistance of the United States in acquiring Cuba's independence from Spain. The memorial was damaged by crowds following the Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961 and the eagle on top was broken and removed.[53] The Communist government then added its own inscription blaming "imperialist voracity in its eagerness to seize the island of Cuba" for the Maine disaster.[53][54]

A brass torpedo tube hatch recovered from the Maine is on display at Lakeside Park in Oakland, CA. It was stolen from its mount in the park in May of 2011, but quickly recovered by authorities after the thieves attempted to sell it for scrap metal.[55]

^Allen, Francis J. (1998). "Honoring the Heroes: The Raising of the Wreck of the U.S. Battleship Maine". Warship International (Toldeo, OH: International Naval Record Organization) XXXV (4): 386–405. ISSN0043-0374.

Alden, John D. (1989). American Steel Navy: A Photographic History of the U.S. Navy from the Introduction of the Steel Hull in 1883 to the Cruise of the Great White Fleet. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 0-87021-248-6.

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